(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for It’s A Small World, originally shared on March 18, 2021. It was the ninety-ninth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
I studied in Israel for a semester in college.
One day I was walking down the street in Jerusalem when I heard someone yell, “David!”.
Well, how many David’s are there in Jerusalem. I didn’t even turn my head. I
heard the voice repeating “David!” and getting closer. I turned around and it
was a girl who lived two doors down the street from me in my hope town. She was
from a different college and I had no idea that she would be there.
You’ve probably had a similar experience
where previously unknown connections between events or people are suddenly
revealed to show us how closely connected we are. We say, “It’s a small world”.
The idea of six degrees of separation has
been around since 1929 and states that every person in the world is separated by,
on average, no more than six social connections (like a friend or a relative,
or someone we know) from any other person in the world. That’s pretty small.
It’s also a big, big world. For starters, the
world is almost 25,000 miles around and has a surface area of almost 200M
square miles. It is almost 8,000 miles from one side of the world to the other,
through its core. And it has a population of almost 8B people. That’s pretty
big.
How can something be big and small at the
same time?
Today we’re going to talk about how the
Church does it without even breaking a sweat.
We are taking great strides, currently, into
returning to the new normal. Movie theaters, stores, churches, schools, restaurants,
sporting facilities, and more are opening to indoor service, though a fraction
of their seating capacity. Still, its progress. Some people are still being careless,
and things aren’t opening up as quickly as they could, but things are
improving.
Disneyland is opening on a very limited
basis on April 30th. It will only allow 15% occupancy that will fall
or ruse as coronavirus cases fall or rise, but I think that there’s a good
chance that some of that crowd will always be parents being dragged by their hyper-ventilating
toddlers to a ride called “It’s a Small World”. It’s a boat ride down a river past people
puppets from all over the world, with similar facial structures but different
colors and pastel national costumes, singing the “It’s a Small World” song over
and over. And over. It’s designed to show children that everyone’s basically the
same. That it’s located in the Fantasyland section of Disneyland may be sending
a message also.
You may also have seen the words in your
rear-view mirror, “Caution. Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.”
Humanity is incredibly diverse. That, I
think, is a strength. But we in the Christian Church, though composed of the
full range of human diversity throughout the world, are also one. And we are
basically the same in our human nature. We are sinners, separated from God by
our sin, in need of a savior. And we have opened our hearts to the work of that
Savior, Jesus Christ, on the cross.
Paul writes, in his letter to the Galatians,
the 3rd chapter, starting at the 29th verse
*Galatians
27-29
We are also very different. Each of us has a
different gift or gifts that appear one at a time through out our lives. These
gifts aren’t given to us, but through us for the benefit of all, but they are
specific. We are together the Body of Christ, and individually we are members
of it.
A member is a part of a body.
Each part of the Body of Christ has been
given everything it needs to accomplish that for which it was made, from a
single cell to an organ, a muscle, a tendon or a nerve. From part of a system
to the entire system within the body.
Paul writes, in his first letter to the
Corinthians, the 12th chapter, beginning at the 27th
verse.
We are the body of Christ AND individually
members of it.
This is how the Church, the Body of Christ,
works. It is large and small at the same time.
And nowhere is this expressed more so than
in small groups.
Small groups have personalities based on the
spiritual gifts of those who compose them. They are only together for a time,
however, and then they split and grow again. They take on a new personality.
They are always taking on new people and are best suited for the training of
first-generation Christians and the discipling of existing members, for
building up the Body of Christ.
But you can’t give away what you don’t have.
How do we learn and grow?
It’s hard not to grow in small group. A
small group is in your face. But it can easily be taken off-track. It takes
effort and resolve to keep it focused the growth of our true selves and off the
emotional needs of one or two people, on the inspiring and off the drama, on
the creation of the Christian life and not, what one colleague calls “majoring
in minors”.
Successful groups get attached to one
another and then, if their hearts are in the right place, have to say goodbye
as they grow and split and form new groups in order to stay personal and true
to their purpose, and building-up of the Body of Christ, to stay small.
Small will be the norm in the New Normal.
Small groups will be places for worship, study, and disciple-making. But hey
will be dynamic, not static.
They will follow a typical small group
model: They will not be designed to last, but to grow and reproduce. Leaders
and assistants will be chosen by a group of 8-16 people (in the case of youth
groups and children’s education, they will be assigned.) They will grow by
personal invitation from members of existing groups, and when they grow past 16,
they will split into two groups and the leader will continue with half the
group and the assistant will be the leader of the other half. New assistants
will be chosen or assigned.
These groups will include age-groups for both
children’s and adult education.
One of the contributions of these groups
will make to the community at large will be the training and experience given
for leaders.
Small groups are hard to maintain and
require constant attention. But I think that they will be a key part of the
Small Normal that is coming. They are the best means we have for rebuilding the
church from the ground up.
Where there is anonymity there is no growth.
Christianity is the relationships that express our common relationship with
God. If it were our actions, then we would be living under a contemporized
version of religious laws. Instead, our focus is first on receiving the gift of
a living relationship with the one true living God that then produces
acts of justice, that is, of doing God’s will.
In the gospel of St. John, the 7th
chapter, starting with the 37th verse, we hear,
*John 7:37-39
We are on the other side of the
glorification, the glorification of the cross, the resurrection, and the ascension
into heaven. We are on this side of the day when Jesus come in his glory to
judge the living and the dead.
We live in a relationship that is on the
other side of our baptism into the death of Christ and this side of our
resurrection like his.
That is not a passive social connection. Christians
live life as a new Creation, a renewal given by the Creator. That life is
formed and fed by living water, the Holy Spirit. Our life is Life itself in
Jesus Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
We live in tension, paradox, and faith, in a
dynamic not a static relationship. We are never alone.
We live in a state of being that is
especially suitable for small groups.
We are both large and small as the one Body
of Christ with many members.
We cannot be a Christian by ourselves. Where
two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, there he is in the midst of them,
but the Body of Christ is large.
Our congregations may be large or small. But
the fundamental building block of the Body is small.
We can easily maintain social relationships
in our churches that just use religious language. Small groups, if we let them, can be the
places where we learn and grow as Christians, sometimes painfully, and and see
new Christians being formed not by social connections but by the power of the
Holy Spirit to transform lives, where we too find ourselves truly connected.
There are no 6 degrees of separation between
Christians, there are 0 degrees of separation among all those who are one in
Christ, connected by the living water of God, where we find ourselves connected
with every other Christian on the planet, in our common relationship with the
one true living God.
That connection makes it truly a small
world.
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